What Is Morality

In the early days of American history, David Brainerd preached the gospel to the Indians. Brainerd wrote, “I never got away from Jesus and Him crucified, and I found that when my people were gripped by this great evangelical doctrine of Christ and Him crucified, I had no need to give them instructions about morality. I found that one followed as the sure and inevitable fruit of the other.”

We agree with the statement that morality follows the embracing of the gospel, but cannot go as far as Brainerd to say that people who are gripped by the gospel need no instruction about morality. One question should suffice. What about Paul’s instruction to the Corinthian assembly? In fact, the Bible is full of such instruction. It has been said that theology cannot be expunged and retain morality. Return to true morality and sanity in sex can never be experienced apart from a return to sound doctrinal teaching. What about the “new morality” and “sex revolution” during the last fifty years? We are now experiencing a world-wide Sodom and Gomorrah and appear to be about ready for judgment.

Jude gave a warning of history to the ungodly of the present century: “Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. Now I desire to remind you, though you know all things once for all, that the Lord, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe. And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day. Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example, in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire. Yet in the same manner these men, also by dreaming, defile the flesh, and reject authority, and revile angelic majesties” (Jude 3-8 NASB).

It is sin that makes the sinner unreasonable. In fact, it is sin rather than reprobation that makes the sinner incapable of salvation. No person who feels that he does not deserve hell wants salvation by Christ. Until he is made willing by God’s grace, no person is willing to accept Christ. The “ungodly men” of Jude 4 assault the truth of God shamelessly. Jude used two different words for “know” in verse 10. The first is oida, which refers to something well-known, and the second is epistamai, which means to know by the natural instinct of unreasoning animals. Therefore, false teachers are compared to unreasoning animals. Now we understand why they make such good “pastors” of goat barns, rather than churches, because sheep see right through them.

It must be understood at the very beginning of this study on morality that true love, by its very nature, is exclusive. True love is never promiscuous. The expression “free love” is a contradiction in terms. If it is free, it is not love. Therefore, if it is love, then it is not free. Chastity belongs to the altar of love. On that altar, no gift is worthy that is not the product of a motive that is pure and its fruit is of complete dedication. This kind of love may be experienced only by a man and woman who have grace.

Taking a giant step by the grace of the sovereign God, the Psalmist said, “Hate evil, you who love the LORD, Who preserves the souls of His godly ones; He delivers them from the hand of the wicked. Light is sown like seed for the righteous, And gladness for the upright in heart. Be glad in the LORD, you righteous ones; And give thanks to His holy name” (Ps. 97:10-12 NASB). An experience with the sovereign God is genuine when one hates sin from the heart. It is not that he hates some sin, but he hates all sin as he grows in the knowledge of the subject of sin. Paul said, “…whatever is not from faith is sin” (Rom. 14:23 NASB). True hatred is fixed because there is no appeasing hatred. The thing hated must be abolished. Hatred is a more rooted affection than anger. Anger may be appeased, but hatred remains and sets itself against the whole kind. If our hatred is the result of Divine grace, we hate all evil—in ourselves first, and then in others. Too many today are like Judah who are severe in censuring others, but partial to themselves (Gen. 38:24-30).

True hatred hates all evil in a just proportion. There can be no God-likeness in us unless we love what God loves and hate what He hates. (Read Psalm 139.) Love and hate are both reciprocal. The distinguishing characteristic of God’s people is love, and its manifestation is hating evil. Those who love the Lord are required to practice righteousness. Paul said, “Nevertheless, the firm foundation of God stands, having this seal, The Lord knows those who are His, and, Let every one who names the name of the Lord abstain from wickedness” (II Tim. 2:19 NASB). We are shown from the very nature of God, that we cannot be acknowledged as the elect of God unless we depart from sin and practice holiness. That is why Paul said, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved” (Eph. 1:3-6 NASB).

God is in Himself the fountain of righteousness, and He must necessarily hate all iniquity. As the persecution by the wicked is prepared to provoke us to seek revenge, the Psalmist guards us against this temptation by asserting that God is the keeper and protector of His people. Solomon said, “The fear of the LORD is to hate evil…” (Prov. 8:13 NASB). “…All those who hate me love death” (Prov. 8:36 NASB).

Promiscuity is answered by Peter in one verse: “…having eyes full of adultery and that never cease from sin, enticing unstable souls, having a heart trained in greed, accursed children” (II Pet. 2:14 NASB). The morality of certain kinds of behavior must be established by Divine principles and not by depraved human statistics. Human statistics approve sex with or without love, but the Bible is clear on the point that sex without love is lust. Paul admonished, “Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body” (I Cor. 6:18 NASB). Sexual sin is against one’s own body.

Christians do not joke about sex. It is not because sex is disgustingly unclean, but because it is something sacred for the marriage relationship. Sex is a God-given endowment to be kept in trust for the person to whom one will give himself or herself in the lifelong, marriage union. Sex is not only the greatest manifestation of the affection of two people, man and woman, bridegroom and bride, but it is God’s ordained method of propagating the human family or race.

Laws that govern the termination of a marriage contract in this country are conflicting and confusing. The marriage contract may be terminated on nearly fifty different grounds (foundation or basis on which a belief or action rests), although they differ from state to state.

There is much debate among religionists as to whether a marriage can be terminated or not. There is also much discussion about the “exceptive clause” of Matthew 5 and Matthew 19. The three major views of termination are associated with the following: (1) Arminians who believe that saved people can be lost, (2) Arminians who believe in the eternal security of the saved, and (3) persons who believe in free grace. Arminians who believe that a saved person can lose his salvation have little difficulty with the termination of a marriage contract. This results from their view of salvation. They believe the covenant is bilateral rather than unilateral in both salvation and marriage. Those who believe in eternal security have more difficulty in explaining the termination of marriage, even though they also believe the covenant is bilateral. Finally, those who believe in free grace stand alone concerning the covenant and marriage being unilateral. Marriage is a type of the union of Christ and His Assembly. Just as our union with Christ can never be terminated because of eternal life, so the type of the assembly is not to be terminated as long as we are in the flesh.

God created male and female. “And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Gen. 1:27 NASB). “Then the LORD God said, It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him” (Gen. 2:18 NASB). Man exists in a state of sexual polarity—two opposite persons—by the ordinance of God. God, having finished His work of creation when He created Adam, pronounced His work “very good.” (Gen. 1:31 NASB). However, concerning the fact that man was “alone,” God said, “it is not good” (Gen. 2:18 NASB). Adam was given lordship, but he lacked companionship. Male or female should acknowledge his or her sex instead of trying in some way to deny it. A woman’s glory is in her femininity. A man’s glory is his masculinity. The differences between the sexes belong to each other. There is a mutual relationship of belonging. Therefore, it is said that man is restless while he misses the rib that was taken out of his side, and woman is restless until she gets under man’s arm from which she was taken. Therefore, woman is man’s completion. The attitude toward sex is positive. Paul said, “For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in lustful passion, like the Gentiles who do not know God” (I Thess. 4:3-5 NASB). Forbidding marriage is the doctrine (teaching) of demons (I Tim. 4:1-3). Celibacy must be studied in the light of the context. (Read I Cor. 7:24-40; 5:1-13.)

Sex has been perverted by the fall. Antagonism between the sexes began immediately after the fall. This is seen in the fact that Adam and Eve proceeded to denounce one another (Gen. 3:12). The fruit of the fall was a sense of guilty shame. They sought to hide their own sexuality. An element has come into human sexuality that is both a consequence and a cause of sin. This element is concupiscence or lust. Example: You can get a crowd for a strip-tease act, but you cannot get a crowd to hear a lesson on morality. The mystery of sex is unveiled in the temple of love and not in the laboratory of lust. The mystery is different physiological knowledge. It is a mystery that has to be experienced by two people—man and wife—married because of love for each other for life. There is no sexual problem in a marriage where love for each other reigns. Christians recognize the reality of sexual desire, but they recognize that such desire is controlled by agape love. Furthermore, marriage to a Christian couple is not licensed fornication (I Cor. 7). Abuse of sex does not bar the use thereof. However, the perversion of sex is used by God to describe the heinousness of sin in Israel (Ezek. 16).